Anti-abortion groups divided over tactics

FILE - In this Tuesday, March 5, 2013 file photo, Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Conway, right, greets Sen. Bobby J. Pierce, D-Sheridan, on the floor of the senate chamber at the Arkansas state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark. Pierce voted against an override of Gov. Mike Beebe's veto of Rapert's legislation that would ban most abortions from the 12th week of pregnancy onward. By adopting the nation's toughest abortion law in the face of certain legal challenge, Arkansas legislators have exposed sharp tactical divisions within the national anti-abortion movement. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)

Associated Press

Summary

By adopting the nation's toughest abortion law in the face of certain legal challenge, Arkansas legislators have exposed sharp tactical divisions within the national anti-abortion movement.

NEW YORK — By adopting the nation's toughest abortion law in the face of certain legal challenge, Arkansas legislators have exposed sharp tactical divisions within the national anti-abortion movement.

Some activists welcomed the new law — a ban on most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy — as a bold challenge to the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that established a nationwide right to abortion. Others fear the ban is headed toward emphatic rejection in court and favor more incremental strategies.

"When you pass a law, the end goal is surviving in court," said Michael Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life. He predicted the Arkansas law would be struck down because it contradicted Supreme Court rulings allowing abortions prior to viability — the stage at about 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy when a fetus could survive outside the womb.

Within moments after the vote in the Arkansas House, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights announced that they would challenge the ban in federal court.

Regardless of the Arkansas law's fate, abortion-rights lawyers will likely be confronted with a series of other laws posing similarly direct challenges to Roe.

In Oklahoma, a "personhood" bill has been introduced that would ban abortions by defining human life as beginning with conception. In North Dakota, the House of Representatives has passed a bill that would ban doctors from performing an abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur as early as six weeks into pregnancy.

A similar "heartbeat" bill was debated by Ohio lawmakers last year before being blocked by the Senate president. The measure, which could be revived this year, fractured Ohio's anti-abortion movement in a debate over its tactical effectiveness.

Gonidakis was among the anti-abortion leaders opposing the heartbeat bill, saying that if it did reach the Supreme Court, which he considered unlikely, it could backfire by producing an even a stronger ruling in favor of abortion rights.

Instead, Gonidakis prefers the incremental approach that anti-abortion activists have employed recently in many states — mostly Republican-controlled — by passing a variety of laws that curtail access to abortion without challenging Roe head-on.

Its spokeswoman, Kristi Hamrick, declined to criticize the Arkansas 12-week ban, but made clear that AUL preferred a less draconian approach taken by 10 states — prohibiting most abortions after 20 weeks under the disputed premise that a fetus may be capable of feeling pain at that stage.

On Wednesday, however, Idaho became the first of those 10 states to have its so-called fetal pain law struck down by a federal court as an unconstitutional violation of Roe v. Wade.

Abortion-rights groups welcomed the Idaho ruling, and so did the National Right to Life Committee, from a different perspective. The committee voiced hope that an appeal would lead the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and produce a ruling upholding the right of states to use fetal pain as a ground for banning abortions after 20 weeks.

Popular Comments

At what point in human development does a person become a human being? I've
asked this question many times and no pro abortionist has ever been able to
coherently answer it. At the point of conception is the zygote alive? Is it
metabolizing? If
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